Current cable and direct satellite television services offer sixty to one hundred and fifty different channels of television programming content. Newer digital television services promise even greater numbers of channels such as a five-hundred (500) channel television service. Furthermore, viewers may soon received television signals from a number of different sources such as terrestrial broadcast analog television, terrestrial broadcast digital television, cable television, and Internet delivered video. As the amount of television and video programming available increases, the demand for improved television channel directories and navigation tools has grown.
“Channel surfing” is one of the most popular methods of navigating current analog cable television or satellite digital television (such as DirecTV) services. A television viewer that is channel surfing typically performs the following steps:                (1) The viewer turns on the television system;        (2) the viewer examines the currently displayed television program on the currently tuned television channel for a few seconds;        (3) if the television program on the current channel appears interesting, then the viewer leaves the television tuned to the current channel and starts viewing the program; and        (4) if the viewer does not find the television program on the current channel to be interesting, the viewer switches to the next channel using the “channel up” button and returns to step (2).Such a channel surfing navigation method requires too much time to scan through the available programs in order to locate a desirable program. For example, in a typical cable television environment with approximately seventy (70) channels, viewers that analyze each television channel for a few seconds will require several minutes of navigation to locate a desirable television program. Furthermore, the few seconds of viewing each channel during the scan does not provide the television viewer with much information about the content of the television program currently being broadcast.        
The channel surfing method is also greatly hampered by commercial advertisements. Specifically, commercial advertisements do not provide any hint as to the content of the television program that is currently being broadcast. Thus, a channel surfing viewer must attempt to remember the channels that were displaying commercial advertisements when the viewer scanned by such channels. The viewer can check such channels at a later time in attempts to examine the program that is being broadcast. However, the viewer will mostly likely forget which channels were displaying commercial advertisements such that the viewer does not receive input on all the possible television channels to view.
Another method of navigating through a large number of channels is to display a program guide channel. Most cable television systems now reserve at least one channel for broadcasting a television based program grid that provides a graphical grid display of the current television programs available. The two-dimensional grid is typically created with a vertical axis that lists several rows of available channels and a horizontal axis that lists viewing times. A television viewer tunes in the program guide channel and then scans though the television program listings on each channel for the viewing time in order to locate a television program that the viewer wishes to view. The viewer then tunes in the appropriate channel for the desired television program.
Such television programming grid based systems are severely limited in that only a very small amount of information about the each television program is displayed. In most television programming grid-based systems, only a short textual television program title and a television program rating symbol are displayed. Such limited program information often does not provide the television viewer with a sufficient understanding of the television program. For example, a television program series is usually only labeled with the title of the television program series. To determine which particular series episode is currently being broadcast, the viewer must tune in the channel and make a determination.
In summary, the current navigation methods and television program guides do not provide viewers with enough information to quickly make informed television program selections. It would therefore be desirable to have improved methods of displaying information about the available television programming.